In among Google's underwelming announcements about its delayed Chrome OS platform the company also confirmed yesterday that its Docs 'offline' feature was making a comeback.

Mountain View said in a brief statement on its Docs blog that offline support would return to the cloudy word processing and spreadsheet editors in early 2011.

"For those who used offline, we are bringing back the much improved feature by taking advantage of advancements in modern browser technology like HTML5," Google product manager Jonathan Rochelle said.

In May this year the Chocolate Factory yanked its Docs offline function and upset some of its customers in the process.

The decision to ditch the feature came after Google in April debuted updated versions of its Docs editors that were bereft of offline access through the firm’s Gears browser extension, which the company has dropped in favour of the HTML5 standard.

That HTML5-happy offline model is now close to completion, which Google said yesterday will - alongside a Docs web app that was added to the Chrome Web Store on Tuesday - "make it even easier to access your docs everywhere you are." ®